Editor,
Ashika Singh, a Class 10 board examinee, was unable to find the right bus for her destination in the absence of her parents. As there was not much time left for the start of the examination, she became nervous and began crying.
When Souvik Chakraborty, a police officer in charge of the Howrah bridge traffic guard in West Bengal, saw the unknown girl crying alone near the Howrah bridge, he realised that the time was really short to reach to the examination centre.
He then promptly took her to his police vehicle and dropped her off at the venue after taking help from his colleagues and seniors in the Lalbazar police headquarters to turn all the traffic signals on their way green, ensuring a clear pathway. On reaching the centre in the nick of time, he wished the girl the best for her examination.
According to the Cambridge dictionary, the word ’empathy’ means the ability to share or experience by imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s situation. The action taken by Souvik Chakraborty is an excellent example of empathy.
Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud rightly pointed out that India needs institutions of empathy more than institutions of eminence. He also suggested some steps to stop such nasty incidents like the suicide by a Dalit student at IIT Bombay and another Dalit student’s suicide at the National Law University in Odisha. Indeed, every society needs empathy, which is the ability to share the feelings of others more than eminence, which is nothing but fame or acknowledged superiority within a particular sphere.
A society needs good human beings, rather than highly intelligent serial killers or extremely greedy, unscrupulous business tycoons. These people may be superior and smart in their respective fields, but they damage and destroy the country, society and environment and do not do anything constructive, whereas an ordinary, honest and caring person contributes a lot to the society.
From the tunnel collapse in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi to flooded streets in Chennai after a few hours of rain highlight that there is something wrong in urban planning. We do not need smart brutes but smart human beings to make anything, be it a city or a country, look smart.
Parents and educational institutions must realise that cooperation is a more important quality than competition among citizens for a country’s survival and progress. Media has a great role to play in this regard. They should highlight and report elaborately acts of empathy like the 12 rat-hole miners who rescued 41 trapped workers from a tunnel in Uttarkashi after working at a stretch for nearly 24 hours inside a narrow steel pipe of 800 mm diameter on their toes.
After the rescue operation, one of them said, “Labourers have saved fellow labourers. May be some day we will be trapped somewhere during work and these rescued workers will save us.”
This very thought, “May be some day we will be trapped” blooms from the ability to share or experience what it would be like to be in that person’s situation.
Such acts of empathy need to be highlighted and discussed in educational institutions at least in one period in every week, so that what the CJI underscored could be translated into reality.
A teacher can use empathy cards to help young children develop their ability to empathise. Each card outlines a particular situation and asks how the person would feel if he or she were in that very situation.
Now let us play with empathy cards. Suppose I myself get an empathy card asking, “Imagine you were a Kashmiri. Then how would you feel now if you have been living in Jammu and Kashmir before, and also after its becoming two union territories?” Honestly, my answer would be, had my state been turned into two union territories, it would have made me sad.
Sujit De,
Kolkata